April Fools!

Silsana stared at her family, gaze distant.

Being simply skulls, of course, her family did not gaze back. Well, not in reality. In her mind, though, they did. The blackness of empty sockets was basically the same as the blackness of corruption to her, and even if they could no longer speak, she heard them.

She had heard a girl at the place she performed discussing April Fools, a day for pranks on loved ones. Who else could Silsana even consider pranking save for her family? As they gazed at one another in silent communion, she knew she had the perfect prank to pull on the skulls.

Well, it hadn’t been exactly intended as a prank originally. But she could make it one, based on her understanding of ‘pranks’, which an outsider might have considered lacking. Fortunately, in her little cave home, only the skulls could judge, and as her family, they were always wonderfully patient with her. Far more polite than they had been in life - but that was the nice thing about bones. Bones loved her. Bones would be kind to her, be patient with her. Flesh was simply an obstacle to the truth of bones.

“I will no longer have need of you all,” she announced to the assembled bones. She could see their shock and surprise. “I will return shortly to clear you all out.”

As she swam out of her cave, she could imagine their confusion and perplexment. They were all she had, after all, how could she stop needing them?

But of course, it was just a silly prank!

She never knew how long it took to reach the place her bones were freed from fleshy prisons. An hour? A day? A year? In the Eternal Depths, what did time even mean? It mattered little, when no sun or moon shed their warmth or light, when only the natural lights of other denizens glowed…

In time, she found them, and embraced them lovingly. A perfect crystalline skeleton, of a truly strange Dextroluma she had found - she had never seen someone with feathered fins before. Their wonderful crystal horns had beckoned to her, and she was now delighted to discover that their entire skeleton was made of crystal. How wonderful, how rapturously perfect! Their bones were freed to where they belonged, and soon she would introduce them to the rest of their family.

She swam back home faster, splashing up into the cave with the newest family member with glee. “April Fools!” she declared to the assembled bones. “We have a new family member!”

Soon, the crystalline skull had joined the others on the rocky ledge, full of light, and the rest of the skeleton she somehow managed to hang from a particularly large crack, also setting the bones aglow. “You know I’ll always need you,” she promised the bones. “But it was funny right?”

The silence of reality was deafened by the laughter in her heart, and soon, Silsana settled to sleep, basking in the patient warmth of her family.